BJ’s, Costco or Sam’s Club. Pallets of canned ham, canned beef, canned pasta, canned soup, canned vegetables that are at least one year away from expiration. It is cheap. It doesn’t look weird to buy large flats of cans. They are easy to stack for storage. You save money over freeze dried while building up stores. It is easy to rotate by using up each layer of the flat. Buy what you’ll eat, then eat some while putting the rest back in a storage location. Canned items also overwhelmingly save effort, since much of it can be eaten without cooking or requiring additional water, a major issue if utilities are shut down.
I have a lot to look over and some very good approaches to "prepping" for what I see as some very bad times ahead...
I had a question on canned food expiration dates, my Spaghettio’s are “Best by 10-21-10”, can I still eat them? (I didn’t ever consider having to rotate stock, but never considered some voters were really continually that stupid and the fraud.)
Here’s my search result;
http://www.foodreference.com/html/tcannedfoodshelflife.html
Canned food has a shelf life of at least two years from the date of processing. Canned food retains its safety and nutritional value well beyond two years, but it may have some variation in quality, such as a change of color and texture. Canning is a high-heat process that renders the food commercially sterile. Food safety is not an issue in products kept on the shelf or in the pantry for long periods of time. In fact, canned food has an almost indefinite shelf life at moderate temperatures (75° F and below). Canned food as old as 100 years has been found in sunken ships and it is still microbiologically safe! We don’t recommend keeping canned food for 100 years, but if the can is intact, not dented or bulging, it is edible.
In a well-run supermarket, foods on the shelf will be rotated on a regular basis, so there is continuous turnover. Each canned food manufacturer has a unique coding system. Some manufacturers list day, month and year of production, while other companies reference only the year. These codes are usually imprinted on the top or bottom of the can. Other numbers may appear and reference the specific plant manufacturing or product information and are not useful to consumers.